Heart in a Box Read online

  THE FIRE

  The flames engulfed the building. Scantily clad and naked women ran in panic from the club entrance. Billowing clouds of smoke burst out with them as they fell to their knees coughing and choking.

  One of the women - young and slender with flaming red hair, and bright red fingernails, and excited by the panic and terror the fire was causing - dragged a man on top of her. She tore open his trousers, grabbed his hard cock in her hands and pulled it into her open cunt. She pulled herself against it, thrusting on it, anxious to draw out its semen and still unsatisfied when she did. She was frantic. She pulled herself off his cock, fell to her knees and started sucking it. She drained it all, slobbering at it hungrily but making sure that none of it escaped. Even when it had all gone, she pulled at his cock with her firmly clenched fingers and sucked loudly in the hope of more.

  I looked up to the balcony. Sparky was trying to squeeze through the windows that led out onto it; they must have slammed shut when Anicka and I made our escape. Sparky just managed to get through. It was tight and she cut her arm on the jagged edge of the rusty latch. A blob of dark red blood dribbled down onto her wrist. She was clutching the box close to her breasts. She waved - it was as if she was excited at seeing me by chance in the street. She came out onto the ledge. Smoke clung to her spiky hair and red sparks fell about her head. She was panting - gasping for breath. Suddenly, she looked afraid, filled with foreboding. I knew her heart must be pounding with fear; the veins in her neck must be throbbing and making her dizzy. She put the box between her feet and she leant onto the balcony rail. Her fingers slowly stretched open as she felt the heat of the metal. I watched the blood from the cut running down her arm - it was as if it was running to slake the heat of the hot iron against the palms of her hands. It flowed between her fingers as she clutched onto the searing balustrade. I imagined the blood steaming and it was heated up. I imagined the smell of it - acrid and salty, biting and pungent. The scent of it must have increased her panic. Yes, she must be inhaling her own steaming blood.

  Unable to suppress happiness, she waved again. She smiled broadly. It was as if there was nothing else in her world except me. I smiled back. It seemed ridiculous. I held my hands up - reaching towards her, as if I was offering to catch her and save her. She smiled again and nodded her head. For a moment I thought she was going to jump. She was surrounded by a cloud of smoke then, as it blew away on an updraft of scorching air, she picked up the box and threw it down to my waiting hands. I caught it. She waved again. I think I called to her to jump or try and climb down, I’m not sure. She started to climb over the balustrade. I could see it was burning her, I could see her pain, but still she tried as hard as she could. She looked down into the darkness below. She looked pitiful, as though she realised that she did not know what was beneath her, that she was unbearably afraid of the empty void that she faced, the abyss of unknowing that was her future.

  I shouted to her, screaming at the top of my voice.

  ‘Sparky! Sparky! Try! Try hard!’

  Suddenly, I saw her body jerk. I thought perhaps the heat of the metal on her hands was too much, that she could not stand it or was jumping back in fear of the dark emptiness beneath her burning feet. She jerked again and this time fell back onto the balcony. She still managed to hold on with her fingertips for a few moments.

  I screamed to her to try and hang on, to try harder, to put up with the pain, that it would pass, that she could save herself if only she hung on. But I knew it was hopeless - in my heart I knew she was lost.

  The smoke surrounded her. She was disappearing into it. I saw her jerk again and realised she was being pulled back! The smoke cleared for a second as a burst of flames spilled from between the balcony doors. There were hands around her ankles! Yes, she was being pulled back into the room!

  Her arms strained out towards me, her fingers stretched and reaching, but she could not resist the pressure on her ankles. Unerringly, she was pulled backwards across the metal grill floor of the balcony and into the smoke and flames of the room.

  I stood waiting for ages, mesmerized, hoping that she might suddenly emerge, that any moment she would wave and call down to me, but she did not. In the end, as the flames reached up to the high pitched roof and curled into the smoky sky, I knew she was lost.

  It started to rain - suddenly and heavily. It brought the smoke down with it. My lungs were full of it. The wet cobbled street glistened around my feet. It was like standing in a shimmering hellish sea.

  They brought Sparky out and laid her down in the rain, her bare back against the cold wet ground, her eyes staring blankly up into the downpour. The neon light above the entrance to the club still flashed, highlighting her face and hair in a macabre mask of redness. They laid Pastor Wick alongside her - the murderer and his victim, bound together in death.

  I wanted to fall on my knees beside her, to wake her up, to bring her vital spark back into the world, but instead I stood, frozen with fear and remorse, unable to even to blink my eyelids.

  Anicka took the place I wanted to inhabit. She knelt at Sparky’s side, massaging her, stroking her, trying to bring her back to life. Her tears fell on Sparky’s face, but they could not revitalise her, they were only a balm of sadness, a solemn wetness confirming the misery of her departure.

  ‘Wake up, Sparky. Sparky, Wake up,’ Anicka kept repeating, as though the invocation would work where her tears had failed, but even her incantation was insufficient to reverse the change from life into death. Her piety and devoted effort could not bring Sparky back to life.

  A fire appliance drew up behind them. The shiny steel ladder of the fire engine began extending as the hose reels were pulled out from the sides. Within seconds water was spraying over the flames. Sizzling steam rose from it. Acrid choking smoke descended to the ground and swirled at my feet.

  The red haired woman did not stop sucking hungrily at the man’s cock. She squeezed it in her hands. She took it deep into her throat, pressing her lips against its base as she swallowed on it in the hope of drawing out still more of its nectar.

  I dropped down and sat on the wet cobbles, now soaking with dirty soot stained water that streamed down the side of the burning building in a waterfall. I held the box across my knees. I gripped it tightly, knowing that it was at the heart of what had happened, and that it was Sparky’s last gift. I pictured her again throwing it down to me. I saw how pleased she was that I had caught it. Her face had lit up when I had secured it in my grasp. And it seemed so strange. Why had she been so desperate to get it back to me, she knew the heart was no longer in it? Why had she been so pleased that she had seen it in my hands even though she must have known her own fate was by then sealed?

  Water from the building splashed down onto me, and the rain continued to pour. I felt as if I was in a storm of fire. I looked down at the dirty water that had washed from the building mixing with the rain that was running around me. I was sitting in a pool of it. I felt it against my bottom. I felt sullied by it - dirty and degraded. The water was not cleansing me, it was contaminating me. Suddenly, I had an overpowering need to be punished. I wanted pain. I wanted to suffer at someone’s hand. I wanted to be a victim, to feel that I had no control over my destiny. I wanted to be humiliated and disgraced.

  I opened the box - I don’t know why - and saw straightaway that my passport was inside it! That’s what Sparky had been so frantically stuffing inside. That’s what she had been saving from the flames. A rough note, scrawled in haste on a charred piece of paper with bright red lipstick was pushed between its pages. I could hardly bear to read it.

  “Syra! I’m so excited! Here is your passport. We have achieved our mission! We are such good investigators! XXX.”

  I clutched it in my shaking hands and broke down in uncontrollable sobbing.

  I listened to the spurting water as it sloshed over the hot burning building and splashed d
own onto me, covering my head, my shoulders, my legs and feet. I smelled steam; its moisture filled my nostrils. I looked again at the note. Already it was soaked, its words disappearing in drawn out runny strands of red. The kisses at its end now looked like bloody scratch marks etched by fingers from which the nails had been roughly pulled.

  I stared out through my tear soaked eyes. The steel ladder was high above me. A fireman on the platform at its top was struggling to restrain the powerful hose as he directed it over the roof of the building and in through the French windows where I had seen Sparky dragged back by the clawing hands of Pastor Wick. At the base of the towering ladder the red haired woman who had been sucking the man’s cock was pawing at three firemen who stood around her.

  The firemen’s yellow shiny waterproof trousers glistened wet in the flickering light of the fire. Their tan coloured braces, hung on their broad shoulders, pulling the loose waistbands of the heavy trousers high onto their muscular chests. The red haired woman’s face was wet - I wasn’t sure whether it was from spilled semen or water. Her dress was little more than a sling across her shoulders. She pulled it off as if she was dropping a handkerchief and it fell like a wet rag around her feet. She stood naked in front of them, her red hair blazing in the flickering light. She turned and leant against the side of the fire engine, holding her arms up high against its red painted side before pressing her naked body against the smooth glistening metal. She squirmed against it, rubbing her nipples and the notch at the front of her cunt hard against its surface. In her movements I saw her delight - the sensation of her skin pressed firmly against the smooth metal, her exposure, her need.

  A narrow hose with a shiny brass end dangled from a metal cylinder above her head. One of the firemen reached up and yanked it hard. A length of the hose spun off the wildly rotating cylinder that held it. It curled around her like a snake, slapping her back and twisting about her feet. She pressed herself harder against the side of the red fire engine - the sensation of the slapping hose only increased her desire for contact with the smooth metal. Her hair blended against it and the light from the flickering of the flames seemed to set her on fire. She seemed to be burning like a passionate, out of control torch.

  The firemen pulled her from the side of the fire engine. She fought against them, suddenly wanting to stay where she was, finding comfort in the contact she had with the smooth metal of the vehicle, the heat of fire on her back, and the unfulfilled potential of only imagining what might happen to her.

  One of them sat on an aluminium step built into the side of the fire engine. The others pushed her face forward across his knees. It must have been the sudden contact with the shiny waterproof material - perhaps it was cold or hot, I didn’t know - but she reared back, writhing against the firemen’s controlling hands as if she was in pain. For a moment I saw her hard nipples. The sight of them filled my cunt with a wave of pleasure. I pushed my hand between my thighs - I couldn’t stop myself. Water dripped from my elbows to my wrists. I watched it running down the back of my hand and dribbling between my legs. A thrill filled my stomach. I licked my lips and fixed my stare on the struggling woman.

  One of the firemen forced his hands against her back and drove her down. As she fell forward, she reached her hands out across the cobbles and straightaway the other firemen stood on them, pinioning them fast, holding her in place. The sudden sensation of captivity filled her with a fresh fear. I could tell from her jerking movements that she was overcome with dread. I could see from her frenzy that the horror of her situation had dawned on her anew. She wriggled against them, trying to snatch her hands way from the heavy feet that held them down, struggling to push herself up against the hands pressing down on her back and pinioning her so tightly against the seated man’s knees. All her efforts were hopeless - she was overpowered, pinioned, and completely under their control.

  I held the palm of my hand against my naked cunt - pressing so flatly against it filled me with joy. I kept it there - feeling the fullness of my flesh. I didn’t want to move it for ages - the heat, the wetness, the way my legs were splayed apart, the feeling of proneness, all conspired to fill me with pleasure. The fireman holding his hands against the woman’s back released her but she did not rear back or try to get free, she lay still, so dominated that she now no longer needed physical restraint. I drove my fingers into the crack of my cunt and at the same time pressed myself down heavily against them. I gulped noisily as I felt myself stuffed. I wanted my whole hand inside. I wanted to be filled with it, plugged by it. I wanted to feel that instead of it being in me, it was me who was draped over it. I swallowed hard and drove it in until I felt my wrist against the dilated flesh at its entrance. My mouth gaped wide.

  The fireman behind the red haired woman took the brass hose end and held it over her buttocks. It glinted in the flickering red light of the fire. I thought she would move, that she would come to her senses, struggle again to release herself - but she did nothing. Perhaps she thought they would free her now, perhaps she did not realise that anything else was planned for her, that her destiny was already prescribed by others, perhaps she knew there was no longer any point in trying to summon up the will to act - it was impossible to tell.

  I pulled my hand in and out of my cunt - that was all I could do to even partially satisfy myself. I watched the fireman pulling the trigger of the brass hose end - it was slow, considered, premeditated. I waited for the drenching spray. I wondered how forceful it would be, whether it would be a trickle or a deluge, whether it would bring the suffering of stinging pain or the gentle sensation of delicate joy.

  I pushed myself back against the wall so that I could push my hand in harder. At last the trigger was fully pulled in. The spray issued from its end. It was a deluge - a forceful flood of water that streamed out with such force it knocked the red haired woman forwards against the man’s knees. There was nothing gentle or delicate about it - it was fierce, punishing, and hurtful.

  I knew I was plunging my hand in and out of my cunt - I could feel it, I was filled with the joy of it, the terrible plugging of it - but all I could see was the powerful spray of water splashing on the woman’s back. It was like a flood of blood - shimmering red in the blazing flames, covering her body in a sparkling scarlet torrent, smearing her crimson. It mixed with her red hair, ran off her face, dripped down her outstretched arms and onto her pinioned hands.

  I knew I was crawling forward, on my hands and knees across the wet dirty cobbles. I hadn’t got my hand inside my cunt any more - I could tell that - but I felt wetness across it as I brought my knees forward and squeezed each of its stretched edges tightly against the other. I was lured by the crimson spray. All I could see was its redness, all I could smell was the steamy moisture of it, all I could feel was its heat as it drew me forward crawling on the soaking dirty cobbles.

  I clung onto the fireman’s leg as he pushed the nozzle of the hose into the red haired woman’s cunt. He injected the spray into her. It flooded out and ran down her legs in pouring streams. She must have tightened against it - she could not have done otherwise. She screamed, I think, but my head was buzzing so loudly I couldn’t be sure. It rained from her, as powerful as when it entered. I crawled beneath the forceful plume, allowed myself to be covered in it. I offered my buttocks to it, my cunt. I wanted it in me as well. I wanted to be consumed by it. I knelt before it, waiting for it, longing for it.

  When it came into me I screamed. It was everything I wanted - a spray of crimson rain, filling me full, drenching me from the inside, I revelled in it as it filled me. I absorbed all of it as I knelt on all fours in the splashing pool it formed around me. I don’t know how long they kept it in - I felt so giddy and confused. I was thrashed with the hose for a while, but I only remember things clearly again when the spray was driven into my anus. As I was consumed by again by the delectable flood in my rectum I began to feel my orgasm overtaking me. It came in spasms to start with, bu
t soon it joined together into a wave so strong, so sustained, that I lost myself to it, falling into an unknown place where only the delights of joy existed and I did not.

  I sank my teeth into the red haired woman’s neck, I remember that, and sucked at her blood as the water streamed into my rectum. I sucked so hard, I guzzled so greedily, that I thought I would drown myself in it. I didn’t know if I was swallowing it or breathing it. All I know was that I was filled by it, drenched by it, and covered in it as I drank from her at the same time that I was filled with the red flaming spray beneath the blazing light of the still burning fire. All I felt were my jerking seizures, my captivity, my soaking and the fire within. All I know was that in the end I didn’t know the end. When the flames of the fire burned away, when the blood was spilling from my mouth in sloppy globs, and when the spray from the hose, the drenching rain and the cascading sparks from the fire blended together, the red turned to darkness and I gave myself up to the shadows of a complete and fulfilling pleasure such as I had never even imagined possible.

  MIRANDA’S LAST TASK

  I sat in the airport, my head in my hands. I didn’t know why I’d come here. I didn’t even know how I’d got here. I didn’t have any way of buying a ticket either. It was ridiculous. I realised I was here only because I didn’t know what else to do. I felt stupid and hopeless.

  The box sat heavily on my knees. It had brought so much trouble, so much suffering. I wanted to throw it away. I thought of abandoning it. I looked into the main concourse. A tall elegant woman in a red dress was striding towards me. It was Miranda!

  I sat frozen to the spot. I didn’t know if I was even thinking anything - I felt numb all over.

  She stood in front of me, looking down on me. Anicka stood just behind her staring at the floor and absently kicking her heels.